Mike Fleming

UPDATE: I was slightly misinformed on Laura Linney. Am told by her camp she will play Daisy, the distant cousin of FDR (Bill Murray), whose affair with the president is revealed during the visit of the Royal Couple to the Roosevelt estate. I thought she wasn’t a good physical match for Eleanor Roosevelt and there you go. They are still casting the First Lady.

EXCLUSIVE: We’ve known since late March that Bill Murray was likely to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Roger Michell-directed Hyde Park on the Hudson. Now, I’m hearing that Laura Linney is making a deal to play his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. What a cast to provide some high drama during a visit by King George VI to Hyde Park, the upstate New York home of the Roosevelt duo. The visit took place in 1939, as momentum toward WWII was building, and also as it was becoming clear that FDR was having an affair with his cousin Daisy. The Richard Nelson script will be a hot sales title next week for Focus Features at the Cannes Film Festival. Besides her acclaimed Showtime series The Big C, Linney will next be seen in The Details, starring with Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks in the Jacob Aaron Estes-directed film that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by The Weinstein Company. Linney is repped by ICM and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.